I'm set on a green Gaggia E24 as my impression from the website I was going to order from it is an almost racing green / forest green colour rather than a bright green. But having seen some other images after a search I'm worried that it'll be a bright metallic green? This would definitely not be the vibe for me. How close would owners of one say it matches this image?
Warning: this post is unreasonably long, I started typing and now here we are.
TL;DR: Drove my standard range model 3 for 20.5hrs and 1,900kms over two days. Cost me $126 in charging, 3hrs of charge stops, zero disasters, and FSD drove most of the way.
I recently took my 2024 Model 3 RWD on a fairly decent road trip from Adelaide to the Victorian High Country and back to see family with both the outbound and return side of the trip done in one day each. After doing the trip and analysing the difference between my plan and the trip itself I thought it might be useful to share for those who are either considering an EV and are worried about road tripping in particular, or those with an EV and range anxiety.
I'm just going to type this all out in what feels like the most logical order and if I miss any details you'd like to know about I'm more than happy to expand. I really enjoy road tripping in general both before and after buying my Model 3 and have enjoyed optimising the trips over time.
For context this would be well over my 20th road trip in this specific car and I have put 80,000kms on it since I bought it in early 2024.
Car Specs and Current State
2024 Model 3 'Highland' RWD
60kWh gross LFP pack
Approx 3.5% battery degradation so estimated 55.5-56kWh usable
Odometer: 80,xxxkms
Trip Planning
I planned the trip out using ABRP which I usually do before every trip regardless of if I have driven the route before or not. I have done Adelaide to Melbourne countless times but Adelaide to High Country Vic only once before and it was summer so I knew efficiency would take a hit this trip. My calibrated consumption in ABRP was 140wh/km @ 110kph in ideal conditions. I planned using the Tesla network exclusively.
ABRP planned the route as follows:
Right off the bat I knew I was probably going to stop in Tailem for a coffee anyway but I left it out of the plan knowing I would plug in there and take whatever I got in the time it took to grab my coffee.
ABRP planned the return leg in pretty much just the reverse order with a top up in Bordertown to make it across Lofty:
The Drive
I planned to leave at 5am and had the car automatically precondition 30 mins before departure as well as ensuring it was at 100% SoC on departure. It became apparent early on in the drive that I was going to need a stop of some sort before Nhill because getting the cold soaked pack up to temp cost me a bit of energy and so did the climb through the Adelaide Hills in the cold. I got an awful 171Wh/km on the leg to Tailem bend resulting in an arrival of 67% after just 104kms meaning I would have fallen short of my Nhill stop by about 10%. I knew I had Keith, Bordertown and Kaniva as bailout options anyway but my Tailem stop brought the pack back up to 98% after 15mins so I was good to go.
Charge Stop 1: Tailem Bend SC: 68% to 98% 15mins
Charge Stop 2: Nhill SC: 22% to 92% 30mins
After 30mins in Nhill was probably 10 minutes longer than I planned for I made it to Bendigo with no issues at 9% SoC. These first two legs cost me a fair bit more energy than I had planned for due to the weather and temperature.
Charge Stop 3: Bendigo SC 9% to 85% 32mins
Bendigo was my lunch stop and both me and the car were ready at the same time so no waiting around for the car just finished lunch and got in without thinking too much about my SoC. The next leg I will admit is probably not what I would recommend especially to someone new to EVs or to those who don't have access to the Tesla network. I had a estimated arrival SoC of 2% when I left Bendigo but knew I could bring that number up by sticking to 110kph indicated on the Hume rather than 110kph GPS speed which is what I did and I arrived at my Destination near bright with 4% SoC. That sort of arrival is something I have become super comfortable with, I knew I had a bailout at Euroa anyway if needed but decided to send it.
Return Leg
ABRP had me planning to leave my starting point of the return leg with 90% SoC but this didn't happen (had 61%) so I planned to use Euroa as a top up before heading to Bendigo. That split the leg into two 150km legs which was a breeze. I slightly overcharged in Euroa because I was walking near the lake-ish thing there and got distracted.
Charge Stop 4: Euroa SC 18% to 62% 13mins
Charge Stop 5: Bendigo SC 22% to 92% 32mins
Bendigo was once again the lunch stop and I somehow entered the Subway just after 11 other bloody people so it actually took a while to get food and a coffee which meant I had overcharged slightly again meaning my arrival in Nhill was super safe SoC-wise.
Charge Stop 6: Nhill SC 18% to 68% 16mins
Nhill is where I changed my plan slightly. Originally I wanted to try and have a long stop there and make it home, with Bordertown or Tailem as bailouts, but I decided to try and have dinner at the pub in Tailem instead and needed to make it before close so I shortened my stop in Nhill and pivoted to a stop in Keith to try and stay in the faster region of the battery pack / curve. I usually try to avoid Keith like the plague, its an old V2 and people still don't know not to plug into the same cabinet if they can help it so I have experienced some terrible power share speeds there and overall the 120kW peak just robs me of 30-50kW of peak speeds low in the pack, Bordertown is usually my go to. If I had my time again I actually would have shortened my stop in Nhill even more and then gone to Bordertown to top up on the V3+ site there to make it to Tailem, this would have saved me 5 or so minutes.
Charge Stop 7: Keith SC 31% to 77% 18mins
From Keith it was off to dinner then on to home, arriving home with 9% SoC.
Final Drive Stats
Total distance was 1,910kms
Total driving time was 20hrs 36mins
Total Charging time was 3hrs 14mins
Total Energy used was 299kwh
Total average efficiency ended up at 156Wh/km - one of the worst efficiencies I've gotten on a road trip
The total cost was $126 including my home charge to 100% before the trip started
Overall the trip went really well and the key pieces of advice I'd give to new EV owners or road trippers is to have a plan, but to be comfortable with changing that plan as well as to have done a little bit of research on where you can fallback to should you experience worse efficiency than planned, or see that a charger ahead is unavailable or busy. Being on the Tesla network does make things a lot easier and the in-car trip planning is pretty rock solid.
Understanding where your car's pack is slow and fast is also very helpful and probably something that is not widely known, explained or talked about much outside of people who are super into EVs. Arriving at 10-20% and charging up to 70-80% is always going to be faster than trying to charge through the 80-100% range where speeds taper off aggressively. The sweet spot for my Model 3 is to charge up to around 65% SoC before the LFP tapers pretty hard. Arriving single digits (not necessarily my recommendation) means I can get a 250km leg dispatched from a 15 minute charge stop and can keep hopping charger to charger that way.
This has been an absolute novel but hopefully it shows how a decent length road trip in a standard range EV is completely achievable. I am a big fan of the LFP chemistry and after 80,000kms and only 3.5% battery degradation the RWD Model 3 is as good a road tripper as anything in my opinion.
Happy to answer any questions and hear people's thoughts!
After owning an EV for a few years, after having maintained my multiple ICE vehicles myself for my entire adult life, I can't really understand why EV resale hasn't steadied outside of a lack of education and understanding.
I have put 75,000kms on my Model 3, have 2.8% battery degredation, and have not had a single mechanical failure. Outside of the obvious utility of a land cruiser I can't see why one would hold more value than a well established LFP-powered EV?
Do you think resale values will climb as more and more people see how many kms these cars are capable of chewing up or is there something else making people nervous about them?
EDIT: some great points made here, seems like consensus is the speed of technological and feature improvement combined with the overall drop in price across the market as more manufacturers scale means the ceiling for a used EV keeps lowering, disproportionately depreciating the vehicle from its sticker price. Lots of good points in here. I think I probably looked at this as someone who doesn't need the latest and greatest and has put a much more mechanical / reliability lens on it rather than a tech consumer one.
Hi everyone, I'm hoping this isn't one of those questions that gets asked here so much to the point of irritation. I've done a search and have already picked up some points but wanted to ask about my specific situation.
I have some experience painting panels but think absolute DIY level. I work on my own cars mechanically so naturally if some wheels or a sunroof has needed some paint I've fairly enthusiastically gone ahead and given it a crack and for the most part have been happy with the results. All of this work has been done on cars worth less than say $10,000 and have been either quick wheel sprays or turning a roof from a chalky sun damaged mess into something passable that won't rust any time soon.
What I haven't attempted yet is properly painting a panel that I want to look as good as the panel next to it, for example a roof or front/rear bumper.
The question I am essentially asking, is what is the bare minimum requirements for tools and I suppose skill set that I would need to pull off a result on a panel that YOU guys would deem a pass, and how hard should I anticipate it to be to achieve. Is this a "practice on 10 panels before you try your first actual panel" type hard or "take it slow, follow the process and you'll get great results" type hard?
I have an Iwata AZ3 which I bought to be able to handle base coat and clear on single panel jobs, I have access to a big shed with no real air movement (but huge to the point where active ventilation shouldn't be required). I have all the usual PPE. I obviously have access to sandpaper, denibbing tools etc.
I'm also in Australia if that's of any relevance.